Resurrection

Resurrection of the Flesh (1499-1502) Fresco by Luca Signorelli
Chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto

Resurrection is most commonly associated with the raising of a person from death back to life, or the reuniting of the spirit and the body of an individual. What this means depends upon one's presuppositions about the nature of the human person, especially with regard to the existence of a soul or spirit counterpart to the physical body. The term plays a particularly powerful role in Christianity, as the resurrection of Jesus is its core foundation. What the nature of the resurrected body is an issue still debated on. But, if the resurrestion of the body is considered to restore the psychosomatic unity of a human personality, it carries important implications. Recent philosophers of religion, therefore, insightfully try to connect this restored psychosomatic unity with the continuation of a personal identity and of spiritual growth beyond physical death.

Classical Greek Philosophy

Classical Greek philosophy sharply divides a human being into two parts, body and soul. The soul is both pre-existent and immortal, but in this life it is imprisoned or entombed in the body. Physical death simply means the return of the soul to its original world of immortality. Resurrection means reincarnation (metempshychosis, transmigration of the soul), borrowing another body here on the earth. Among the ancient Greeks, Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato are well known for their teachings on reincarnation. Platonism is often considered to be most representative of Classical Greek philosophy on this topic.

Ancient Religions in Palestine and Mesopotamia

Accounts of the resurrection of a deity, and not necessarily of a human being, can be seen in ancient religions and myths in Palestine and Mesopotamia. Accorings to Joseph McCabe, "Centuries before the time of Christ the nations [in that region] annually celebrated the death and resurrection of Osiris, Tammuz, Attis, Mithra, and other gods." A cyclic dying-and-rising god motif was prevalent throughout ancient Mesopotamian and classical literature and practice (e.g., in Syrian and Greek worship of Adonis; Egyptian worship of Osiris; the Babylonian story of Tammuz; rural religious belief in the Corn King).

World Religions

The Platonic-type view of a pre-existent soul and its transmigration into the physical realm until final release in perfection is reached through a process of development taking many lifetimes (Hindu-Buddhist) or one (Latter Day Saints), is one form of belief about resurrection. In Buddhism, the perfected person may return to the earth in a new body in order to assist others on their path of spiritual growth.

Islam has a strong doctrine of resurrection in terms of the final judgment of all human beings. The dead will rise from their graves for the judgment, through which the faithful will be brought to eternal life in paradise, while the wicked will be sent to hell to suffer in eternal flames.

Judaism

Pre-Maccabaean era

Prior to the Maccabaean struggle with Antiochus Epiphanese in the second century B.C.E., the notion of bodily resurrection or reincarnation was basically absent in Judaism, which, unlike Greek philosophy, did not recognize the immortality of the soul and which was also contnent with the idea of Sheol as the permanent abode of shades of all departed. Even so, we can still find passages in the Hebrew Bible that can be considered to allude to some kind of resurrection:

• Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones being restored as a living army: a metaphorical prophecy that the house of Israel would one day be gathered from the nations, out of exile, to live in the land of Israel once more.
• 1 Samuel 2:6, NIV - "he brings down to the grave and raises up."
• Job 19:26, NIV - "after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God."
• Isaiah 26:19, NIV - "your dead will live; their bodies will rise."
• Ezekiel 37:12, NIV - "I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them."

Other passages may be more ambiguous: in the Hebrew Bible, Elijah raises a young boy from death (1 Kings 17-23), and Elisha duplicates the feat (2 Kings 4:34-35). There are a multiplicity of views on the scopes of these acts, including the traditional view that they represented genuine miracles and critical views that they represented resuscitations rather than bona fide resurrections. Other common associations are the biblical accounts of the antediluvian Enoch and the prophet Elijah being ushered into the presence of God without experiencing death. These, however, are more in the way of ascensions, bodily disappearances, translations or apotheoses than resurrections.

Maccabaean and Post-Maccabaean era

The idea of resurrection was developed in Judaism during the Maccabaean struggle. It reflected Jewish people's desperate hope for their continued existence after death in the unbearable persecution. Hence Daniel's vision, where a mysterious angelic figure tells Daniel: "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel 12:2). The notion of resurrection became widespread in Judaism especially among the Pharisees (but not among the Sadducees) by the first century C.E. C. F. Evans reports, "The surviving literature of the inter-testamental period shows the emergence of resurrection belief in diverse forms: resurrection of righteous Israelites only, of righteous and unrighteous Israelites, of all men to judgment; to earth, to a transformed earth, to paradise; in a body, in a transformed body, without body."

Orthodox Judaism

A famous Medieval, Jewish halakhic, legal authority, Maimonides, set down thirteen main principles of the Jewish faith according to Orthodox Judaism, and belief in the revival of the dead was the thirteenth. Resurrection has been printed in all Rabbinic prayer books to the present time.

The Talmud makes it one of the few required Jewish beliefs, going so far as to say that "All Israel have a share in the World to Come...but a person who does not believe in...the resurrection of the dead...has no share in the World to Come" (Sanhedrin 50a).

The second blessing of the Amidah, the central thrice-daily Jewish prayer is called Tehiyyat ha-Metim ("the resurrection of the dead") and closes with the words m'chayei hameitim ("who gives life to the dead") i.e., resurrection. The Amidah is traditionally attributed to the Great Assembly of Ezra; its text was finalized in approximately its present form in about the first century C.E.

Christianity

In Christianity, resurrection refers to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead on the Judgment Day, or other instances of miraculous resurrection.

Resurrection of Jesus

The resurrection of Jesus may have been the most central doctrinal position in Christianity taught to a Gentile audience. The Apostle Paul said that "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile"(1 Corinthians 15:17, NIV). According to Paul, the entire Christian faith hinges upon the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus. Christians annually celebrate the resurrection of Jesus at Easter time.

Resurrection of the dead

Christianity started as a religious movement within first-century Judaism, and it retains the first-century Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead. Most Christians continue to uphold this belief: that there will be a general resurrection of the dead at "the end of time," as prophesied by Paul when he said that "he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice" (Acts 17:31, NIV), and that "there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked" (Acts 24:15, NIV). Most also believe that it is only as a result of the atoning work of Christ, by grace through faith, that people are spared eternal punishment as judgment for their sins. The Book of Revelation makes many references about the Day of Judgment when the dead will be raised up. Belief in the resurrection of the dead, and Jesus Christ's role as judge of the dead, is codified in the Apostles' Creed, which is the fundamental creed of Christian baptismal faith.

Resurrection miracles

The resurrected Jesus Christ commissioned his followers to, among other things, to raise the dead. Throughout Christian history up to the present day there have been various accounts of Christians raising people from the dead.

In the New Testament, Jesus is said to have raised several persons from death, including the daughter of Jairus shortly after death, a young man in the midst of his own funeral procession, and Lazarus, who had been buried for four days. According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus's resurrection, many of the dead saints came out of their tombs and entered Jerusalem, where they appeared to many. Similar resuscitations are credited to Christian apostles and saints. Peter raised a woman named Dorcas (called Tabitha), and Paul restored a man named Eutychus who had fallen asleep and fell from a window to his death, according to the book of Acts. Proceeding the apostolic era, many saints were known to resurrect the dead, as recorded in Orthodox christian hagiographies. Faith healer William M. Branham and evangelical missionary David L Hogan in the twentieth century claimed to have raised the dead.

Theological issues

In Christianity, there are a few theological issues related to resurrection, which need to be discussed here.

First of all, what is the meaning of the resurrection of the body? Is it the precise resuscitation of the same physical body as before? Yes, it is, if it concerns resurrection miracles mentioned-above in which the same physical body is still there without decaying. But, what if the body decays long after its death? In this case, only some Christins believe that the very same earthly body will come back. Most Christians reject it in favor of Paul's assertion that bodily resurrection means the resurrection of an "imperishable," "glorified," "spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:42-44), similar to Jesus in his resurrected state. It is "a body of a new order, the perfect instrument of the spirit, raised above the limitations of the earthly body, with which it will be identical only in the sense that it will be the recognizable organism of the same personality."

Second, when does bodily resurrection happen? Paul has two different answers. His first answer is that it takes place immediately after physical death (2 Corinthians 5:1-4). His second answer is that it will take place on the Day of Judgment in the last days (1 Corinthians 15:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). Usually Christianity supports the second answer. But, if the resurrection of Jesus took place almost immediately after his death, why can't our resurrection also take place immediately after our physical death, following Paul's first answer? Also, if Paul's second answer were correct, there would be a long period of time from the moment of phyiscal death till the last days, during which the soul would have to await its bodily resurrection - a period whcih is called the "intermediate state" in Christian theology. In this state, the soul would have no physical counterpart coupled with it, and it would make a personal identity impossible, as will be seen in the following issue. This can become quite a strong reason to argue that bodily resurrection should take place immediately after death.

A third issue is the continuation of a personal identity beyond death. As was noted above, one benefit of resurrection is "the recognizable organism of the same personality." In the words of Alan Richardson, "The idea of 'the resurrection of the body'...was the natural Hebraic manner of speaking about the risen life of Christians with Christ: it is in the body that persons are recognizable as individuals with their own personal identity. Hence 'resurrection of the body' means resurrection after death to a fully personal life with Christ in God." The notion of a personal identity made possible by bodily resurrection is in agreement with the basic philosophical tenet of Thomas Aquinas that the individuation of "form" is made possible by "matter" that is coupled with "form." Just like there would be no individuation without matter, there also would be no personal identity without resurrection. The question is: Did God arrange us in the created world, so we might always enjoy our personal identity? Or would God allow our personal identity to be interrupted at times? If we were created as unique creatures in this world, it seems that he would not allow our identity to be destroyed even for a moment.

Growth beyond Death

There is actually another important issue that needs to be addressed.

Recommended reading

• Fyodorov, Nikolai Fyodorovich. Philosophy of Physical Resurrection 1906
• Wright, Tom. The Resurrection of the Son of God. 2003, Augsburg Fortress Publishers, ISBN 0800626796
• Albright, William Foxwell, From Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and Historical Process 2003, ISBN 1592443397
• Hatch, Edwin,Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian Church (1888 Hibbert Lectures), 1995, ISBN 0913573612
• Hock, Ronald F., The Favored One: How Mary Became the Mother of God, Bible Review, p. 12-25, June 2001. Also in this issue: Limberis, Vasiliki, The Battle Over Mary, top of p. 22-23

External links

• Why should I believe in the Resurrection and the Afterlife?
• Jewish Encyclopedia: Resurrection
• Philosophy Now
• Minds in the Making
• Gnosticism
• Divine Principle

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